Well-established classroom management procedures ensure that you and your students focus on what matters: learning.
Maybe you also have a great interest in your content or subject area and enjoy your day being centered around that topic. Or you had a great teacher growing up, and you strive to walk in their steps. Maybe you even had a great teacher in your family. Maybe you enjoy the community aspect of working in schools. Maybe you just enjoy the schedule.
Whatever your reasons, noble as they may be, I have a sneaky suspicion you didn’t pick your career path because you were passionate about hall passes, supply cubbies, or seating charts! But those are the things that will dominate your every day – unless you do a great job planning ahead and establishing the procedures necessary for your class to function as it needs to for your kids to learn at a high level.
Classroom management can be the difference between a successful lesson and a train wreck. The best teachers tend to have high-level facilitation skills.
They can prime the room, and the occupants for exactly what they want to happen, and they have the skills to adjust when they sense the tides have turned for the worse. This is people management more than simply content delivery or teaching strategies.
This is a skill set that you see in many professions, but it has heightened importance for us because of the stakes at play. Your students are important! The conditions for them to succeed are also very important.
Veteran teachers with strong classroom management skills learn to be flexible, and they can head off issues when they see the signs. Being able to take the temperature of the room and adjust on the fly is a skill that comes with time and will be extremely valuable in your career but it should not be the go-to for your classroom.
It's great to have the skills to think on your feet like that, but not great for your kids if you're constantly changing plans and your room stays in flux. So how do you manage the room, without always having to adjust?
You eliminate issues through procedures. Classroom procedures prevent problems before they begin by having a plan.
What do you need a plan for? Everything! Just kidding, but think through your students' time in the room. What needs are they likely to have? How do they get help? How self-sufficient can they be?
The better your established classroom management models the less you will have to pull out your super facilitator skills and the more time you can spend doing the task you envisioned you would be doing when you applied for the job: teaching. Keep reading for some procedures to build into your classroom management plan.
When students arrive, what do they do? Do they walk in, then move about and socialize? Do they wait until after you have begun to get out materials?
To a new teacher, those seem like silly questions. They are not. Your students need to know exactly what you expect upon arrival. If you want them ready when the bell rings, that needs to be communicated.
Be overly specific with what you want to see here. Don’t get frustrated when they haven’t met expectations you haven’t taught. My suggestion is to always have a starter or Bell Ringer on the board as they arrive and to make that a valuable part of instruction.
If you value that time, so will they.
We want our students to be prepared. Some won’t be. Sometimes this is an oversight by them, or, as most educators suspect, it is a priority issue.
In my experience, this often isn’t really that the student doesn’t care to be prepared as much as it wasn’t high on the priority list.
If you have worked with underprivileged students you know that sometimes materials are scarce and sometimes school serves as more than school. These students should be why we got in the field, they need us!
So we need to have a backup plan for when they forget a pencil, or when their Chromebook or school device isn’t charged. For my room, I always kept some spare supplies for students and they knew how to access those supplies.
Sometimes this meant me loaning my own supplies to make it work, but often I kept our classroom supply bin stocked with supplies that I found lying about after school dismissal every day.
You can often get help from parents if you need to. My daughter’s class has a supply list. On the list, the teacher explained that a portion of the supplies was going to the community surplus in her room. Be creative, don’t let a student's situation be the reason they aren’t successful.
Teachers know this frustration. You just explained the assignment. It is now time for individual work on the assignment. And multiple hands shoot up: “Mr. Pruitt, What are we doing?”
You need a plan to curb this and build some independence. Otherwise, you're going to go through stress balls rather quickly.
My solution for my middle and high schoolers went like this: “two before me.” If you had a question regarding directions, I wanted my students to quietly ask two students nearby before asking me. If those two didn’t know the answer, I likely needed to clarify it for the whole group anyhow. Consistent application is king with this tip. If not, you can develop a learned helplessness as you will be constantly giving directions to individual students.
This one is largely dependent on your situation. Your schedule matters, your distance to the building landmarks the kids need matters as well.
One thing I would note here is that you need some accountability with hall passes at all levels. We do an electronic sign-out, that creates an “ePass”. If you can, that's great. If not, a simple logbook works as a sign-out sheet.
You need accurate records of time in/time out. If a student is struggling in your class, you may want to see how much time they are out of it! Also, your logbook will come in handy if any discipline issues occur when the student has left your room. Hall passes are particularly important in high school classroom management.
I suggest having voice levels and defined roles for groups. You want to make sure the room stays on task and that each group member has made a contribution so create some roles that must be assigned before the work begins.
Lastly, have a solid plan for extension activities. You could have quiet reading time, journals, exit slips, STEM challenges, or opportunities for research. I kept several bins of supplies with short directions in my science lab that students could use to challenge themselves by using the engineering process.
When I was a student, my favorite classes all had opportunities for reading or journals. My personal advice, stay away from busy work like extra worksheets. If students feel the extension is valuable and has some personal choice, they will love your class. If finishing my work means I get another worksheet, well you can probably guess how students approach that class.
These are just a few classroom management examples that have made my classes run smoother. This list is a few I think everyone could benefit from, but it is far from a complete list of procedures.
Every school is different. Every grade level is different. Sometimes even from class to class, the procedures need to be adjusted. Take some time to develop your plan and – most importantly – take some time to teach your plan.
You can also further your research by checking out our list of the best classroom management articles.
Maybe you also have a great interest in your content or subject area and enjoy your day being centered around that topic. Or you had a great teacher growing up, and you strive to walk in their steps. Maybe you even had a great teacher in your family. Maybe you enjoy the community aspect of working in schools. Maybe you just enjoy the schedule.
Whatever your reasons, noble as they may be, I have a sneaky suspicion you didn’t pick your career path because you were passionate about hall passes, supply cubbies, or seating charts! But those are the things that will dominate your every day – unless you do a great job planning ahead and establishing the procedures necessary for your class to function as it needs to for your kids to learn at a high level.
Classroom management can be the difference between a successful lesson and a train wreck. The best teachers tend to have high-level facilitation skills.
They can prime the room, and the occupants for exactly what they want to happen, and they have the skills to adjust when they sense the tides have turned for the worse. This is people management more than simply content delivery or teaching strategies.
This is a skill set that you see in many professions, but it has heightened importance for us because of the stakes at play. Your students are important! The conditions for them to succeed are also very important.
Veteran teachers with strong classroom management skills learn to be flexible, and they can head off issues when they see the signs. Being able to take the temperature of the room and adjust on the fly is a skill that comes with time and will be extremely valuable in your career but it should not be the go-to for your classroom.
It's great to have the skills to think on your feet like that, but not great for your kids if you're constantly changing plans and your room stays in flux. So how do you manage the room, without always having to adjust?
You eliminate issues through procedures. Classroom procedures prevent problems before they begin by having a plan.
What do you need a plan for? Everything! Just kidding, but think through your students' time in the room. What needs are they likely to have? How do they get help? How self-sufficient can they be?
The better your established classroom management models the less you will have to pull out your super facilitator skills and the more time you can spend doing the task you envisioned you would be doing when you applied for the job: teaching. Keep reading for some procedures to build into your classroom management plan.
When students arrive, what do they do? Do they walk in, then move about and socialize? Do they wait until after you have begun to get out materials?
To a new teacher, those seem like silly questions. They are not. Your students need to know exactly what you expect upon arrival. If you want them ready when the bell rings, that needs to be communicated.
Be overly specific with what you want to see here. Don’t get frustrated when they haven’t met expectations you haven’t taught. My suggestion is to always have a starter or Bell Ringer on the board as they arrive and to make that a valuable part of instruction.
If you value that time, so will they.
We want our students to be prepared. Some won’t be. Sometimes this is an oversight by them, or, as most educators suspect, it is a priority issue.
In my experience, this often isn’t really that the student doesn’t care to be prepared as much as it wasn’t high on the priority list.
If you have worked with underprivileged students you know that sometimes materials are scarce and sometimes school serves as more than school. These students should be why we got in the field, they need us!
So we need to have a backup plan for when they forget a pencil, or when their Chromebook or school device isn’t charged. For my room, I always kept some spare supplies for students and they knew how to access those supplies.
Sometimes this meant me loaning my own supplies to make it work, but often I kept our classroom supply bin stocked with supplies that I found lying about after school dismissal every day.
You can often get help from parents if you need to. My daughter’s class has a supply list. On the list, the teacher explained that a portion of the supplies was going to the community surplus in her room. Be creative, don’t let a student's situation be the reason they aren’t successful.
Teachers know this frustration. You just explained the assignment. It is now time for individual work on the assignment. And multiple hands shoot up: “Mr. Pruitt, What are we doing?”
You need a plan to curb this and build some independence. Otherwise, you're going to go through stress balls rather quickly.
My solution for my middle and high schoolers went like this: “two before me.” If you had a question regarding directions, I wanted my students to quietly ask two students nearby before asking me. If those two didn’t know the answer, I likely needed to clarify it for the whole group anyhow. Consistent application is king with this tip. If not, you can develop a learned helplessness as you will be constantly giving directions to individual students.
This one is largely dependent on your situation. Your schedule matters, your distance to the building landmarks the kids need matters as well.
One thing I would note here is that you need some accountability with hall passes at all levels. We do an electronic sign-out, that creates an “ePass”. If you can, that's great. If not, a simple logbook works as a sign-out sheet.
You need accurate records of time in/time out. If a student is struggling in your class, you may want to see how much time they are out of it! Also, your logbook will come in handy if any discipline issues occur when the student has left your room. Hall passes are particularly important in high school classroom management.
I suggest having voice levels and defined roles for groups. You want to make sure the room stays on task and that each group member has made a contribution so create some roles that must be assigned before the work begins.
Lastly, have a solid plan for extension activities. You could have quiet reading time, journals, exit slips, STEM challenges, or opportunities for research. I kept several bins of supplies with short directions in my science lab that students could use to challenge themselves by using the engineering process.
When I was a student, my favorite classes all had opportunities for reading or journals. My personal advice, stay away from busy work like extra worksheets. If students feel the extension is valuable and has some personal choice, they will love your class. If finishing my work means I get another worksheet, well you can probably guess how students approach that class.
These are just a few classroom management examples that have made my classes run smoother. This list is a few I think everyone could benefit from, but it is far from a complete list of procedures.
Every school is different. Every grade level is different. Sometimes even from class to class, the procedures need to be adjusted. Take some time to develop your plan and – most importantly – take some time to teach your plan.
You can also further your research by checking out our list of the best classroom management articles.
Maybe you also have a great interest in your content or subject area and enjoy your day being centered around that topic. Or you had a great teacher growing up, and you strive to walk in their steps. Maybe you even had a great teacher in your family. Maybe you enjoy the community aspect of working in schools. Maybe you just enjoy the schedule.
Whatever your reasons, noble as they may be, I have a sneaky suspicion you didn’t pick your career path because you were passionate about hall passes, supply cubbies, or seating charts! But those are the things that will dominate your every day – unless you do a great job planning ahead and establishing the procedures necessary for your class to function as it needs to for your kids to learn at a high level.
Classroom management can be the difference between a successful lesson and a train wreck. The best teachers tend to have high-level facilitation skills.
They can prime the room, and the occupants for exactly what they want to happen, and they have the skills to adjust when they sense the tides have turned for the worse. This is people management more than simply content delivery or teaching strategies.
This is a skill set that you see in many professions, but it has heightened importance for us because of the stakes at play. Your students are important! The conditions for them to succeed are also very important.
Veteran teachers with strong classroom management skills learn to be flexible, and they can head off issues when they see the signs. Being able to take the temperature of the room and adjust on the fly is a skill that comes with time and will be extremely valuable in your career but it should not be the go-to for your classroom.
It's great to have the skills to think on your feet like that, but not great for your kids if you're constantly changing plans and your room stays in flux. So how do you manage the room, without always having to adjust?
You eliminate issues through procedures. Classroom procedures prevent problems before they begin by having a plan.
What do you need a plan for? Everything! Just kidding, but think through your students' time in the room. What needs are they likely to have? How do they get help? How self-sufficient can they be?
The better your established classroom management models the less you will have to pull out your super facilitator skills and the more time you can spend doing the task you envisioned you would be doing when you applied for the job: teaching. Keep reading for some procedures to build into your classroom management plan.
When students arrive, what do they do? Do they walk in, then move about and socialize? Do they wait until after you have begun to get out materials?
To a new teacher, those seem like silly questions. They are not. Your students need to know exactly what you expect upon arrival. If you want them ready when the bell rings, that needs to be communicated.
Be overly specific with what you want to see here. Don’t get frustrated when they haven’t met expectations you haven’t taught. My suggestion is to always have a starter or Bell Ringer on the board as they arrive and to make that a valuable part of instruction.
If you value that time, so will they.
We want our students to be prepared. Some won’t be. Sometimes this is an oversight by them, or, as most educators suspect, it is a priority issue.
In my experience, this often isn’t really that the student doesn’t care to be prepared as much as it wasn’t high on the priority list.
If you have worked with underprivileged students you know that sometimes materials are scarce and sometimes school serves as more than school. These students should be why we got in the field, they need us!
So we need to have a backup plan for when they forget a pencil, or when their Chromebook or school device isn’t charged. For my room, I always kept some spare supplies for students and they knew how to access those supplies.
Sometimes this meant me loaning my own supplies to make it work, but often I kept our classroom supply bin stocked with supplies that I found lying about after school dismissal every day.
You can often get help from parents if you need to. My daughter’s class has a supply list. On the list, the teacher explained that a portion of the supplies was going to the community surplus in her room. Be creative, don’t let a student's situation be the reason they aren’t successful.
Teachers know this frustration. You just explained the assignment. It is now time for individual work on the assignment. And multiple hands shoot up: “Mr. Pruitt, What are we doing?”
You need a plan to curb this and build some independence. Otherwise, you're going to go through stress balls rather quickly.
My solution for my middle and high schoolers went like this: “two before me.” If you had a question regarding directions, I wanted my students to quietly ask two students nearby before asking me. If those two didn’t know the answer, I likely needed to clarify it for the whole group anyhow. Consistent application is king with this tip. If not, you can develop a learned helplessness as you will be constantly giving directions to individual students.
This one is largely dependent on your situation. Your schedule matters, your distance to the building landmarks the kids need matters as well.
One thing I would note here is that you need some accountability with hall passes at all levels. We do an electronic sign-out, that creates an “ePass”. If you can, that's great. If not, a simple logbook works as a sign-out sheet.
You need accurate records of time in/time out. If a student is struggling in your class, you may want to see how much time they are out of it! Also, your logbook will come in handy if any discipline issues occur when the student has left your room. Hall passes are particularly important in high school classroom management.
I suggest having voice levels and defined roles for groups. You want to make sure the room stays on task and that each group member has made a contribution so create some roles that must be assigned before the work begins.
Lastly, have a solid plan for extension activities. You could have quiet reading time, journals, exit slips, STEM challenges, or opportunities for research. I kept several bins of supplies with short directions in my science lab that students could use to challenge themselves by using the engineering process.
When I was a student, my favorite classes all had opportunities for reading or journals. My personal advice, stay away from busy work like extra worksheets. If students feel the extension is valuable and has some personal choice, they will love your class. If finishing my work means I get another worksheet, well you can probably guess how students approach that class.
These are just a few classroom management examples that have made my classes run smoother. This list is a few I think everyone could benefit from, but it is far from a complete list of procedures.
Every school is different. Every grade level is different. Sometimes even from class to class, the procedures need to be adjusted. Take some time to develop your plan and – most importantly – take some time to teach your plan.
You can also further your research by checking out our list of the best classroom management articles.
Jordan resides in Lexington, Kentucky. He has experience in Public Education as an Administrator, Science Teacher, and as a Coach. He has extensive experience with School Discipline, PBIS, SEL, Restorative Practices, MTSS, and Trauma-Informed Care.
Maybe you also have a great interest in your content or subject area and enjoy your day being centered around that topic. Or you had a great teacher growing up, and you strive to walk in their steps. Maybe you even had a great teacher in your family. Maybe you enjoy the community aspect of working in schools. Maybe you just enjoy the schedule.
Whatever your reasons, noble as they may be, I have a sneaky suspicion you didn’t pick your career path because you were passionate about hall passes, supply cubbies, or seating charts! But those are the things that will dominate your every day – unless you do a great job planning ahead and establishing the procedures necessary for your class to function as it needs to for your kids to learn at a high level.
Classroom management can be the difference between a successful lesson and a train wreck. The best teachers tend to have high-level facilitation skills.
They can prime the room, and the occupants for exactly what they want to happen, and they have the skills to adjust when they sense the tides have turned for the worse. This is people management more than simply content delivery or teaching strategies.
This is a skill set that you see in many professions, but it has heightened importance for us because of the stakes at play. Your students are important! The conditions for them to succeed are also very important.
Veteran teachers with strong classroom management skills learn to be flexible, and they can head off issues when they see the signs. Being able to take the temperature of the room and adjust on the fly is a skill that comes with time and will be extremely valuable in your career but it should not be the go-to for your classroom.
It's great to have the skills to think on your feet like that, but not great for your kids if you're constantly changing plans and your room stays in flux. So how do you manage the room, without always having to adjust?
You eliminate issues through procedures. Classroom procedures prevent problems before they begin by having a plan.
What do you need a plan for? Everything! Just kidding, but think through your students' time in the room. What needs are they likely to have? How do they get help? How self-sufficient can they be?
The better your established classroom management models the less you will have to pull out your super facilitator skills and the more time you can spend doing the task you envisioned you would be doing when you applied for the job: teaching. Keep reading for some procedures to build into your classroom management plan.
When students arrive, what do they do? Do they walk in, then move about and socialize? Do they wait until after you have begun to get out materials?
To a new teacher, those seem like silly questions. They are not. Your students need to know exactly what you expect upon arrival. If you want them ready when the bell rings, that needs to be communicated.
Be overly specific with what you want to see here. Don’t get frustrated when they haven’t met expectations you haven’t taught. My suggestion is to always have a starter or Bell Ringer on the board as they arrive and to make that a valuable part of instruction.
If you value that time, so will they.
We want our students to be prepared. Some won’t be. Sometimes this is an oversight by them, or, as most educators suspect, it is a priority issue.
In my experience, this often isn’t really that the student doesn’t care to be prepared as much as it wasn’t high on the priority list.
If you have worked with underprivileged students you know that sometimes materials are scarce and sometimes school serves as more than school. These students should be why we got in the field, they need us!
So we need to have a backup plan for when they forget a pencil, or when their Chromebook or school device isn’t charged. For my room, I always kept some spare supplies for students and they knew how to access those supplies.
Sometimes this meant me loaning my own supplies to make it work, but often I kept our classroom supply bin stocked with supplies that I found lying about after school dismissal every day.
You can often get help from parents if you need to. My daughter’s class has a supply list. On the list, the teacher explained that a portion of the supplies was going to the community surplus in her room. Be creative, don’t let a student's situation be the reason they aren’t successful.
Teachers know this frustration. You just explained the assignment. It is now time for individual work on the assignment. And multiple hands shoot up: “Mr. Pruitt, What are we doing?”
You need a plan to curb this and build some independence. Otherwise, you're going to go through stress balls rather quickly.
My solution for my middle and high schoolers went like this: “two before me.” If you had a question regarding directions, I wanted my students to quietly ask two students nearby before asking me. If those two didn’t know the answer, I likely needed to clarify it for the whole group anyhow. Consistent application is king with this tip. If not, you can develop a learned helplessness as you will be constantly giving directions to individual students.
This one is largely dependent on your situation. Your schedule matters, your distance to the building landmarks the kids need matters as well.
One thing I would note here is that you need some accountability with hall passes at all levels. We do an electronic sign-out, that creates an “ePass”. If you can, that's great. If not, a simple logbook works as a sign-out sheet.
You need accurate records of time in/time out. If a student is struggling in your class, you may want to see how much time they are out of it! Also, your logbook will come in handy if any discipline issues occur when the student has left your room. Hall passes are particularly important in high school classroom management.
I suggest having voice levels and defined roles for groups. You want to make sure the room stays on task and that each group member has made a contribution so create some roles that must be assigned before the work begins.
Lastly, have a solid plan for extension activities. You could have quiet reading time, journals, exit slips, STEM challenges, or opportunities for research. I kept several bins of supplies with short directions in my science lab that students could use to challenge themselves by using the engineering process.
When I was a student, my favorite classes all had opportunities for reading or journals. My personal advice, stay away from busy work like extra worksheets. If students feel the extension is valuable and has some personal choice, they will love your class. If finishing my work means I get another worksheet, well you can probably guess how students approach that class.
These are just a few classroom management examples that have made my classes run smoother. This list is a few I think everyone could benefit from, but it is far from a complete list of procedures.
Every school is different. Every grade level is different. Sometimes even from class to class, the procedures need to be adjusted. Take some time to develop your plan and – most importantly – take some time to teach your plan.
You can also further your research by checking out our list of the best classroom management articles.
There are many reasons we decided to take on Teaching as a career path. First and foremost you care about kids. You want to help them succeed. You want to take part in improving your community’s future. You have a burning desire to help others.
Maybe you also have a great interest in your content or subject area and enjoy your day being centered around that topic. Or you had a great teacher growing up, and you strive to walk in their steps. Maybe you even had a great teacher in your family. Maybe you enjoy the community aspect of working in schools. Maybe you just enjoy the schedule.
Whatever your reasons, noble as they may be, I have a sneaky suspicion you didn’t pick your career path because you were passionate about hall passes, supply cubbies, or seating charts! But those are the things that will dominate your every day – unless you do a great job planning ahead and establishing the procedures necessary for your class to function as it needs to for your kids to learn at a high level.
Classroom management can be the difference between a successful lesson and a train wreck. The best teachers tend to have high-level facilitation skills.
They can prime the room, and the occupants for exactly what they want to happen, and they have the skills to adjust when they sense the tides have turned for the worse. This is people management more than simply content delivery or teaching strategies.
This is a skill set that you see in many professions, but it has heightened importance for us because of the stakes at play. Your students are important! The conditions for them to succeed are also very important.
Veteran teachers with strong classroom management skills learn to be flexible, and they can head off issues when they see the signs. Being able to take the temperature of the room and adjust on the fly is a skill that comes with time and will be extremely valuable in your career but it should not be the go-to for your classroom.
It's great to have the skills to think on your feet like that, but not great for your kids if you're constantly changing plans and your room stays in flux. So how do you manage the room, without always having to adjust?
You eliminate issues through procedures. Classroom procedures prevent problems before they begin by having a plan.
What do you need a plan for? Everything! Just kidding, but think through your students' time in the room. What needs are they likely to have? How do they get help? How self-sufficient can they be?
The better your established classroom management models the less you will have to pull out your super facilitator skills and the more time you can spend doing the task you envisioned you would be doing when you applied for the job: teaching. Keep reading for some procedures to build into your classroom management plan.
When students arrive, what do they do? Do they walk in, then move about and socialize? Do they wait until after you have begun to get out materials?
To a new teacher, those seem like silly questions. They are not. Your students need to know exactly what you expect upon arrival. If you want them ready when the bell rings, that needs to be communicated.
Be overly specific with what you want to see here. Don’t get frustrated when they haven’t met expectations you haven’t taught. My suggestion is to always have a starter or Bell Ringer on the board as they arrive and to make that a valuable part of instruction.
If you value that time, so will they.
We want our students to be prepared. Some won’t be. Sometimes this is an oversight by them, or, as most educators suspect, it is a priority issue.
In my experience, this often isn’t really that the student doesn’t care to be prepared as much as it wasn’t high on the priority list.
If you have worked with underprivileged students you know that sometimes materials are scarce and sometimes school serves as more than school. These students should be why we got in the field, they need us!
So we need to have a backup plan for when they forget a pencil, or when their Chromebook or school device isn’t charged. For my room, I always kept some spare supplies for students and they knew how to access those supplies.
Sometimes this meant me loaning my own supplies to make it work, but often I kept our classroom supply bin stocked with supplies that I found lying about after school dismissal every day.
You can often get help from parents if you need to. My daughter’s class has a supply list. On the list, the teacher explained that a portion of the supplies was going to the community surplus in her room. Be creative, don’t let a student's situation be the reason they aren’t successful.
Teachers know this frustration. You just explained the assignment. It is now time for individual work on the assignment. And multiple hands shoot up: “Mr. Pruitt, What are we doing?”
You need a plan to curb this and build some independence. Otherwise, you're going to go through stress balls rather quickly.
My solution for my middle and high schoolers went like this: “two before me.” If you had a question regarding directions, I wanted my students to quietly ask two students nearby before asking me. If those two didn’t know the answer, I likely needed to clarify it for the whole group anyhow. Consistent application is king with this tip. If not, you can develop a learned helplessness as you will be constantly giving directions to individual students.
This one is largely dependent on your situation. Your schedule matters, your distance to the building landmarks the kids need matters as well.
One thing I would note here is that you need some accountability with hall passes at all levels. We do an electronic sign-out, that creates an “ePass”. If you can, that's great. If not, a simple logbook works as a sign-out sheet.
You need accurate records of time in/time out. If a student is struggling in your class, you may want to see how much time they are out of it! Also, your logbook will come in handy if any discipline issues occur when the student has left your room. Hall passes are particularly important in high school classroom management.
I suggest having voice levels and defined roles for groups. You want to make sure the room stays on task and that each group member has made a contribution so create some roles that must be assigned before the work begins.
Lastly, have a solid plan for extension activities. You could have quiet reading time, journals, exit slips, STEM challenges, or opportunities for research. I kept several bins of supplies with short directions in my science lab that students could use to challenge themselves by using the engineering process.
When I was a student, my favorite classes all had opportunities for reading or journals. My personal advice, stay away from busy work like extra worksheets. If students feel the extension is valuable and has some personal choice, they will love your class. If finishing my work means I get another worksheet, well you can probably guess how students approach that class.
These are just a few classroom management examples that have made my classes run smoother. This list is a few I think everyone could benefit from, but it is far from a complete list of procedures.
Every school is different. Every grade level is different. Sometimes even from class to class, the procedures need to be adjusted. Take some time to develop your plan and – most importantly – take some time to teach your plan.
You can also further your research by checking out our list of the best classroom management articles.
There are many reasons we decided to take on Teaching as a career path. First and foremost you care about kids. You want to help them succeed. You want to take part in improving your community’s future. You have a burning desire to help others.
Maybe you also have a great interest in your content or subject area and enjoy your day being centered around that topic. Or you had a great teacher growing up, and you strive to walk in their steps. Maybe you even had a great teacher in your family. Maybe you enjoy the community aspect of working in schools. Maybe you just enjoy the schedule.
Whatever your reasons, noble as they may be, I have a sneaky suspicion you didn’t pick your career path because you were passionate about hall passes, supply cubbies, or seating charts! But those are the things that will dominate your every day – unless you do a great job planning ahead and establishing the procedures necessary for your class to function as it needs to for your kids to learn at a high level.
Classroom management can be the difference between a successful lesson and a train wreck. The best teachers tend to have high-level facilitation skills.
They can prime the room, and the occupants for exactly what they want to happen, and they have the skills to adjust when they sense the tides have turned for the worse. This is people management more than simply content delivery or teaching strategies.
This is a skill set that you see in many professions, but it has heightened importance for us because of the stakes at play. Your students are important! The conditions for them to succeed are also very important.
Veteran teachers with strong classroom management skills learn to be flexible, and they can head off issues when they see the signs. Being able to take the temperature of the room and adjust on the fly is a skill that comes with time and will be extremely valuable in your career but it should not be the go-to for your classroom.
It's great to have the skills to think on your feet like that, but not great for your kids if you're constantly changing plans and your room stays in flux. So how do you manage the room, without always having to adjust?
You eliminate issues through procedures. Classroom procedures prevent problems before they begin by having a plan.
What do you need a plan for? Everything! Just kidding, but think through your students' time in the room. What needs are they likely to have? How do they get help? How self-sufficient can they be?
The better your established classroom management models the less you will have to pull out your super facilitator skills and the more time you can spend doing the task you envisioned you would be doing when you applied for the job: teaching. Keep reading for some procedures to build into your classroom management plan.
When students arrive, what do they do? Do they walk in, then move about and socialize? Do they wait until after you have begun to get out materials?
To a new teacher, those seem like silly questions. They are not. Your students need to know exactly what you expect upon arrival. If you want them ready when the bell rings, that needs to be communicated.
Be overly specific with what you want to see here. Don’t get frustrated when they haven’t met expectations you haven’t taught. My suggestion is to always have a starter or Bell Ringer on the board as they arrive and to make that a valuable part of instruction.
If you value that time, so will they.
We want our students to be prepared. Some won’t be. Sometimes this is an oversight by them, or, as most educators suspect, it is a priority issue.
In my experience, this often isn’t really that the student doesn’t care to be prepared as much as it wasn’t high on the priority list.
If you have worked with underprivileged students you know that sometimes materials are scarce and sometimes school serves as more than school. These students should be why we got in the field, they need us!
So we need to have a backup plan for when they forget a pencil, or when their Chromebook or school device isn’t charged. For my room, I always kept some spare supplies for students and they knew how to access those supplies.
Sometimes this meant me loaning my own supplies to make it work, but often I kept our classroom supply bin stocked with supplies that I found lying about after school dismissal every day.
You can often get help from parents if you need to. My daughter’s class has a supply list. On the list, the teacher explained that a portion of the supplies was going to the community surplus in her room. Be creative, don’t let a student's situation be the reason they aren’t successful.
Teachers know this frustration. You just explained the assignment. It is now time for individual work on the assignment. And multiple hands shoot up: “Mr. Pruitt, What are we doing?”
You need a plan to curb this and build some independence. Otherwise, you're going to go through stress balls rather quickly.
My solution for my middle and high schoolers went like this: “two before me.” If you had a question regarding directions, I wanted my students to quietly ask two students nearby before asking me. If those two didn’t know the answer, I likely needed to clarify it for the whole group anyhow. Consistent application is king with this tip. If not, you can develop a learned helplessness as you will be constantly giving directions to individual students.
This one is largely dependent on your situation. Your schedule matters, your distance to the building landmarks the kids need matters as well.
One thing I would note here is that you need some accountability with hall passes at all levels. We do an electronic sign-out, that creates an “ePass”. If you can, that's great. If not, a simple logbook works as a sign-out sheet.
You need accurate records of time in/time out. If a student is struggling in your class, you may want to see how much time they are out of it! Also, your logbook will come in handy if any discipline issues occur when the student has left your room. Hall passes are particularly important in high school classroom management.
I suggest having voice levels and defined roles for groups. You want to make sure the room stays on task and that each group member has made a contribution so create some roles that must be assigned before the work begins.
Lastly, have a solid plan for extension activities. You could have quiet reading time, journals, exit slips, STEM challenges, or opportunities for research. I kept several bins of supplies with short directions in my science lab that students could use to challenge themselves by using the engineering process.
When I was a student, my favorite classes all had opportunities for reading or journals. My personal advice, stay away from busy work like extra worksheets. If students feel the extension is valuable and has some personal choice, they will love your class. If finishing my work means I get another worksheet, well you can probably guess how students approach that class.
These are just a few classroom management examples that have made my classes run smoother. This list is a few I think everyone could benefit from, but it is far from a complete list of procedures.
Every school is different. Every grade level is different. Sometimes even from class to class, the procedures need to be adjusted. Take some time to develop your plan and – most importantly – take some time to teach your plan.
You can also further your research by checking out our list of the best classroom management articles.
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